“As soon as the House completes its vote, the Senate will move to take up that bill,” Reid said, “and it will be defeated tonight.”

“No Democrat will vote for a short-term Band-Aid that would put our economy at risk and put the nation back in this untenable situation a few short months from now,” he said.

To which the answer should be: “Where’s the Senate plan?” The Politico article has Harry Reid standing in front of a display that reads, “In the battle of budget scores, Senate plan is a clear winner over Boehner plan.” That was certainly true of the Boehner 1.0 plan, but it’s less clear that it’s true about Boehner 1.1. Either way, Reid’s bill only reduced actual spending by $750 billion rather than Boehner 1.0′s $710 billion over a ten-year period, so neither was exceptionally robust in scoring. It’s a bit like bragging about winning a football game when the only score comes off of a safety.

But that argument assumes the Senate will actually produce a plan. So far, even though Reid controls the majority and the floor, we haven’t even seen a hint of a vote. In fact, we haven’t seen the Senate originate any budget bill in over 800 days. Since Reid’s plan doesn’t include new taxes — or at least that’s his claim — it doesn’t have to originate in the House.

The proper legislative process should be for both chambers to work on their own versions of legislation and form a conference committee to produce a bill for up-or-down votes in each chamber. Reid could have done that with the CCB bill, had he chosen to do so, although there would have been very few commonalities between a Senate response and the CCB around which to compromise. That’s not true of the Boehner 1.1 bill; as National Journal noted yesterday, they have quite a bit in common, including the level of cuts. All that needs to happen is to get the Senate to pass its bill and let the conference committee hammer it out. That can even take place after a vote to kill Boehner 1.1.

If all Reid does is vote to kill the Boehner plan, however, then nothing can happen. Reid wants to bully the House into doing his work. The House should tell Reid to do his job rather than worry about doing theirs. If Democrats never plan to make a proposal, then they should just pass Boehner 1.1, and Republicans should call a halt to any further efforts until Democrats start taking their responsibilities seriously.

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“One is to suffer the economic consequences of default, which all of us hope he doesn’t choose. Two is to bring up the bill we sent prior … or to accept the compromise bill that we are sending over today…,” Cantor added.

This argument that the ratings agencies will lower our rating because of the debt extension in the Boehner plan is not long enough is a phony. It’s nice to see — it’s touching to see how the Democrats have all of a sudden become attached to the idea of certainty — after injecting uncertainty on taxes, health care, regulation into our economy month after month for two years. All of a sudden you have to have certainty.

In the letter that the Senate Democrats have just issued, they warn that there’s going to be a ratings agency downgrade if there is a short-term extension. [Yet] six months is roughly the historic average. It was the average in the Reagan years, which Obama cited as a paragon of being serious about debt.

look, we’re at an impasse. Both sides refuse to budge. So what. The White House is attempting to create a panic, the media is attempting to cover for them. It’s not working, the public wants cuts and there’s adequate revenue to pay the bills that have to be paid.

joeindc44 on July 28, 2011 at 3:33 PM

yep, ‘don’t let a crisis go to waste’ & Alinski tactics ain’t working too well for them this time :-), Rahm must be crushed :-(…oh :-(…they gotta revamp, reshuffle their bibliography and sources a little :-)…it all backfired, despite the MSM’s disgusting bias …